The Ben Mulroney Show - Why isn't healthcare being discussed more as the top issue in the Ontario Election?

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Guests and Topics: Why isn't healthcare being discussed more as the top issue in the Ontario Election? If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. You are that's Greg Brady and for the first hour, Ben O'Hara-Burn, there is a contractual obligation to have some Ben in the show. Thank heavens it's not Mulrooney but he'll be back tomorrow between 9 and noon so Ben O'Hara burn in the chair between 10 and 12 today. I hope you made it where you plan to make it from A to B and maybe a spot in between A and B and I hope if you were given the go ahead and the school boards got their

act together. I can't say they were too late, but they weren't early on this. Knowing about this major winter storm that pretty much has stopped as far as the snow might be a little wet snow happening right now, but it's incredibly significant. And that taking the data, it looks like this is only the third day in the last 15 years that the Toronto District School Board has said we're out. They've canceled school for the entire day. We did it three Januaries ago with the big storm,

35 centimeters plus that closed down the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. That was Jan 17, 2022. What a different world we were living in back then. And also, you want to talk different worlds, in February of 2011, the TDSB closed schools for the whole day that morning because of a winter storm. But three days and 15 years, not very many.

And everybody fell like dominoes this morning. York Region, Peel District School Board, Durham Region, where I am, all the Catholic boards, all the public boards, TDSB. For some reason, York University rolling with the punches. It's also strange because it's a day that York University faculty aren't on strike. That's unusual. Like, the matchup of this, to have a massive snowstorm when they're actually working, this is incredibly unusual. And of course, Toronto Metropolitan University happening today as well. And of course, Toronto Metropolitan University happening today as well. So probably, probably the storm affecting a lot of transportation, a lot of

struggles on the TTC and there's bound to be a lot of delays, a lot of businesses might be slow opening this morning and may not even bother. But we're kind of in that holding pattern. Be cautious out there. Hazardous road conditions. And I'll also tell you before I move on to a pretty big story in the last 24 hours about Mark Carney, the next prime minister of our country. People are even, you got to be careful walking. I got this message last night, and it's my first chance

to really check it out. Be careful walking. There's some crazy drivers out there. I was walking the dog to no frills. We came to the stop sign, saw there was a truck coming, plenty of time to stop. We started to walk. I was paying attention to the truck.

It was not slowing down. So I pulled my dog, Junko, back, and the truck missed us by inches. I'm sure it was a big shock for the drivers. He stopped after going through that intersection. So people don't have the wherewithal. I think we have people driving in these conditions that forget how to drive or have barely ever driven

in the snow ever, ever, ever. So it's one thing to watch, especially when you're out for a walk, whatnot. We'll get to also the fact that Anthony Fury, who you often hear on a radio station, sent a photo and noted the bike lanes were plowed this morning. It's something, I suppose. I'm not sure it should be the A-list priority. I don't know how many letters you want to go

down and say it should be this letter priority, but it's not an A-list priority for the City of Toronto. But don't tell them that because they were plowing bike lanes while walking and transit and driving are still incredibly different things right now. So Mark Carney, as you know, has been making the rounds. were plowing bike lanes while walking and transit and driving are still incredibly different things right now. So Mark Carney, as you know, has been making the rounds, but not really with media chats and not really, you know, scrumming and answering a lot of questions. He's just kind of going to bars and pubs and community halls. And I think he's almost made it all the way across the country. He was in Kelowna, BC.

He was in Regina, Saskatchewan. I think we told you he was in London at the very restaurant I used to work. I'll shout them out again. Joe Cools, a London institution on Richmond Street in London, Ontario. And Carney rented out, they rented out the back room and had like 300, 400 people in there. And there's sort of more little pep rallies for the federal liberals to get the game organized for an election. And lo and behold, before I play you this comment that he made that I think could get

him in some hot water, lo and behold, the NDP internally is telling all their candidates and as importantly, their campaign staff were going, as in going to a federal election. Not in the summer, not in the fall. We're going now, like as in March 10th now, like less than a month from now an election will be called. That's what they're planning on anyway. And CBC obtained a copy of this memo titled, Election Timing and Planning. So they're not giving any way with the title.

And I'll read you real quick. Jennifer Howard leads their campaign, their federal campaign. She writes, it is becoming more and more likely that Mark Carney will be the next liberal leader on March 9th. Correct. If Mark Carney does win the leadership we are hearing from many Ottawa sources, he intends on calling elections shortly after becoming liberal leader. Also correct. This thing got up to like a 7 out of out of ten for a rumor on Saturday and Sunday, the day of the Super Bowl, I had a long call with somebody about it in Ottawa who would know a lot more than I would whether

this is happening or not and they're like it's on like Donkey Kong. Carney wants this on his own, he thinks the liberal votes are floating a bit high right now and I'll talk about that in just a little bit how that affects the various parties and I mentioned earlier even on Toronto Today, if you're with the conservatives, if you're a CPC candidate, an MP, a prospective MP on a campaign staff, this is what you wanted. You asked for this.

And I don't think you're terribly stressed about it. I think people are trying to suggest that you're stressed. But this federal election is a time when Carney is going to go exactly when he thinks, my popularity, I'm having a moment right now, I'm having a Kamala Harris moment from the summer. If Kamala Harris, by the way, could have called an election August 15th instead of November 8th, she'd have done better. We agree on that, right? Like she she would have succeeded more. But having an election in late April, early May has its risks for the Liberal Party.

But the Conservatives have to be ready. They've wanted this. They've called for it. They sure can't complain about it that they're getting it. You don't want to wait till October? Fine, OK, we'll go right now. That seems to be what's going to come down from the Liberals and Mark Carney.

I'll tell you, by the way, who's going to have great stuff on this later today. Alex Pearson, 12 to 3. Sharon Carr is in for John Oakley, 3 to 6. Sharon knows her stuff super connected on this, and she was on Think Tank a bit earlier. So I'll be curious to see what she says, and I'm sure she's checking with those sources as well.

But when Mark Carney wins, he's going to quickly call a federal election that will all, or 65% of us will, go and vote it. Now, is this a troublesome comment for Mark Carney? Is this a throwaway? When you're riffing in these halls and in these bars and you're just sort of chatting, what I've noticed about Carney is he does not necessarily

have the gift of the gap. Maybe more than the average person. You know, say, when you go to a dinner party or somebody's backyard, you know who can talk and who can. And there's a lot of things I can't do. I can talk. That's I'm here because I can talk. I'm flattered and honored and beyond grateful that you care to hear my voice

and care to hear my takes the hot, warm or otherwise. Carney is not the talker I am, but here's the problem. I'm not sure he's the talker. Jugmeet Singh or Pierre Pauliev or in French, Yves-Francois Blanchett is for the Bloc Québécois. Here's what he said in Kelowna the other night, and he made a comparison between the fentanyl crisis in the United States and our fentanyl problem. And it's a quick little clip, but I think this is a campaign ad made for the

Conservative Party of Canada to fire up when that election gets called in March. Fentanyl is an absolute crisis in the United States. It's a challenge here but it's a crisis there. You got that right? It's a challenge in Canada. It's a crisis there. Know anybody who's lost the kid to a drug overdose? I've known three, including a very, very close friend of mine, uh, who's been very public about, uh, about his son's passing so much so that he named a foundation after his son, Jamie Daniels, and that's former broadcaster here in Canada and Detroit Redwings play by play man, Ken Daniels. They lost his son. To ask him if it's a challenge. I know a girl in high school I

knew who is a year younger than me. Lovely girl, super friendly, played tennis, played badminton, played on the same teams with her. They lost their son, her and her husband. You got to be really careful and he's not with language like that. 49,000 overdose deaths from opioids since 2015. Now the conservatives use that number because that's when they came to power, but they're valid in using it. That's a stat. Look at it any way you like and the conservatives have the right to frame it any way you want. We're off to a bad start.

If you're calling fentanyl in this country a challenge and not the full blown crisis it is. That's why we're here. That's what Donald Trump was telling us about our fentanyl situation. It ain't a challenge, it's a crisis. How's everybody doing out there? Digging out. We've had quite the snowfall in Toronto today, probably close to 25 centimeters it's certainly at

least 20 it was 18 at a certain point you never know right because you're like well I'm hearing 15 I'm like yeah I was 15 at like one in the morning it was 10 at 6 o'clock last night I'm giving hypotheticals but we're probably closer to 25 centimeters of snow and do you want the bad news or the worst news we'll get another real big dumping, probably not this, Saturday morning through Sunday evening in, thanks to our friends across the border in Buffalo, New York, where they love snow, they love their bills,

they love their wings, probably in that order, they're going to get socked with a big system that is forecasting for five to ten inches of snow in Buffalo by late Sunday. So ten inches is 24 centimeters. Don't act like you didn't know that. And part of the problem is this is going to hit obviously Niagara Falls, Grimsby, Fort Erie, maybe more that area near the New York State border than it will people far the Eastern region, Scarborough.

But we'll see. Be ready. Brace yourself. Whatever you weren't ready for this morning, be ready Saturday morning through Sunday night is the best concept to go from there. So Anthony Fury sent this photo in, and he published it as well on the X platform.

And it's a photo of bike lanes. Now, this looks like the sun's not up yet, but that could be like 7.50 and 7.30. And it is kind of nuts to look. And he tweeted, schools are closed, vehicles can't get around, but the city of Toronto made it a priority to plow bike lanes before 6 AM. So let me ask you, A, what your thought is about that. I can't, if you've

got one of those fat bikes though, maybe that's helpful for you. I know the thinner the wheel, the snow, the ice, all the sand and the salt that can get in the spokes and whatnot, you're less likely to be riding a bike on this day than any other day. Same as last Sunday. But this must work for somebody. Like the cyclist does have to get around. I got it. I understand there's a lot of people that will easily throw cold water on whatever the city does when they feel it's sort of more about ideology than practicality. But I'd also love to hear from you on the phones about this morning. Your drive to work. Did you not even try? What do you end up doing with your kids on a day like this?

Our parents had figured it out, it felt like, when we were kids. And when there was a snow day, my parents had, my dad's mom had died really early, but we had my grandfather in Strathroyd, far less responsible. He'd probably take us to the track or teach us how to play eight ball when we're six, seven years old. Or the far more responsible parents of my mom in London.

Basically, we'd have to shuttle in with my mom and dad both working. It's a day at grandma's. You're watching sitcoms. You're watching game shows. You're eating hot dogs. It wasn't the worst scenario to hang out there from like about 10 to 5. And believe it or not, that was obviously in a pre work from home mode in the 70s and 80s. So what do you do on a day like this? 416-870-6400. I think you have to be relieved that we didn't do the ridiculous and that it was

so far over the line for the, well, we're not going to run buses, but schools are open. Those days, and there's like, it feels like there's five or six of them every year, drive me bad crap crazy. Can't stand it. You're asking us to do your job. It's not safe, it's not safe for the drivers and the buses and the unions who run the buses, but it is safe for us to put hundreds of more cars on the road to get to a high school where there's 1200 kids that are supposed to be there. And I know not all of them will end up getting there, that's for sure.

416-870-6400, lots of texts on this front about how you handle a morning like this. Most of you did make plans last night, but you get burned sometimes and think it's not going to be as bad as they say. The meteorologists tend to really, really nail those big storms. Tom, thanks very much for the phone call. You're on the Ben Mulroney show. Go right ahead. Hi, Tom. So I was just telling you, I'm a cycling instructor and I'm also a do snow removal. So some of the issue with the bike lane is not that they're prioritizing the bike lane for bikes, but the fact that some of those lanes have sewers. So they have to clean that lane so as slush goes into the bike lane, it doesn't become, accumulate too much and also lets the

slush and salt kind of go into those sewers. So that's a big component. Another thing is scheduling. Sometimes you can't control what's going to get plowed first. It just, you just don't have that a choice in that. Oh, absolutely. Like that makes perfect sense to me. Now, would you take your bike out? Can you ride your bike in weather like this? Really? Yeah. I saw I have a fat bike, which has studs on it. It's carbon fiber, all that jazz. So I go out pretty much, you know, all year.

I have different bikes for every season almost. So I wouldn't think that a majority of cyclists are out today. But if you look at a lot of the Uber, the guys who are doing Uber, they have the fatter tire bikes and their e-bikes generally. So they can make it through the slush and snow

a little bit easier than let's say the skinnier tire bikes that you were alluding to in the beginning of the conversation. Oh my God. OK. So thanks for that, Tom. Like again, I'm not as ticked off about it. I do think it has to.

It can't be no priority. Wouldn't we say then, oh, you're a city, you care so much about bike lanes, whether it's practical or whether it's ideological. And then you don't plow them after you really don't care about the cyclists after all, do you? I'm not saying you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. And I'm a snow you really don't care about the cyclists after all do you? I'm not saying you're damned if you do damned if you don't and I'm not saying it's the biggest priority. What are you supposed to do? I get it and by the way I get Furious Text or is Expo schools are closed

bike lanes are getting plowed well yeah but if bike lanes were not plowed you can't open schools. This same thing by the way Anthony and I were in concert on a ton of COVID closures. People are like, well, how can you open golf courses if schools are closed? Because they're easier to open? Like, what's, they're way easier to make work. Pete, thanks very much for the phone call. You're on the Ben Mulroney show. Go right ahead. Hello, Greg. You're opening up a can of worms here to drive me absolutely mad. Awesome. Awesome. Let's have it. Now listen, I live in Oshawa. I actually live in, uh, in Columbus,

which is just a little bit north of the four Oh seven, kind of the same altitude as Brooklyn. I know you know where that is. Yeah. So you're in zone four for school zones and busing. My kids schools are in zone four because they're down into Oshawa. My kids get bused, one goes to high school and their bus route takes them all the way down Simcoe to across from the hospital. The other kid, it basically goes to a school

that's like Kidron Golf Course south of that. Oh, Kidron Dells. Yeah, so it's down south of that. The schools actually call it Kidron. But the bus comes up, Simcoe picks up our kids and then heads back down. Whenever there is a closure it's always zone one, two, and three. So that's like Beaverton and all the areas up around... So brass tacks of it is you're driving them a ton. They cancel your bus,

but the school is open and you know 85% of the kids are gonna be there so you got to get in there. Sure but what's even better than that is they don't cancel the bus it just refuses to come North of Winchester or walk over to 407 to pick up two kids. It drives me nuts why not make my house part of zone four but anyway that's beside the point. When I go to the school and drop the kids off it doesn't matter whether the buses are running. If it's a bright day in May, there is lines up of cars all over the place that drive these kids from two blocks away from the school that never walk there. So I disagree worrying about parents being on the road in greater numbers. They're doing it anyway, whether they're getting bus or driven or...

Yeah, no, no, no. I get that they are, but I get told all the time that just that's been the balance of how things have changed with the unions that handle the school bus drivers. And listen, I was just mentioning COVID restrictions. We had a tough time finding drivers, incentivizing drivers to go, especially in those early days. When we went back to school in fall of 2020, you couldn't find school bus drivers. And by the way, a lot of those jobs, grandpas, grandmas, people on a break from a job waiting for another one. The age demographic of school bus drivers leaned a little old, and this is all pre-vaccination,

all pre-vaccination. So it was really, really tough to find those people. All right, on the way back, health care. We're two weeks away, two weeks away from a provincial election and there's nothing, nothing I've heard so far that makes me happy about health care from anybody, anywhere

and I'll explain why next. Nice to have you here. It's Greg Brady here till 10 o'clock this morning. Ben O'Hare, Berne in the chair 10 till noon. Then you've got Alex Pearson 12 to 3. Sharon Carr will entertain you and inform you between 3 and 6. Both their takes on whether or not

we're going to a federal election are going to be fascinating. We're in the midst of a provincial election, but let me clarify something, because I get a text message 416-870-6400 from a listener. Disagrees with me. It's fine. There won't be an election in March.

The parties don't even have a full slate of candidates in each of the writings. It's not an overnight process to nominate one. No, it's not. But there won't be a vote in March. So let me clarify that. There will be a vote. It's got to be between 37 and 51 days after it gets called.

So if Carney calls it on May, excuse me, March 11, and there's 31 days in March, it can't be before April 17. It can't be any later than May 1, if he calls it then. And I just think he's going. I'm sure that he's going and most people are starting to get there and the NDP, but via that information thinks that he's going as well. We're in the midst of a provincial election right now, and I haven't heard anything on healthcare that I want to hear.

I hear promises. I want a better healthcare for Ontario and I'm desperately upset and deathly afraid that we just won't get it. I've said this before, I will not age out in this province. I love it here. I don't want to move. I want healthcare to move. I don't want to move.

But you're going to chase me and a lot of others out by not doing anything about this. And I've heard nothing on this front about health care that I need to hear. So let's get to a chat I did a little bit earlier, a few minutes of it, and then I want to take your calls on this because I just thought sometimes an interview happens and it's a clunker or it's just okay. This was great this morning from Dr. Sohail Gandhi. He's the former president of the Ontario Medical Association and I asked him if he thinks health care is getting enough oxygen in this election where we're going to go vote in Ontario two weeks from today. I think we're getting oxygen unfortunately some of it's being sucked up by what's going on to the country the south of us right.

What we're not getting though is we're not really getting from any of the political parties we're not really getting the kind of talk that we need and the kind of plan that we need to transform our healthcare system. We're getting a lot of sound bites on it, right? All of the political parties are about their sound bites ready, but sound bites don't make a great action plan for fixing the healthcare system. And we're not seeing that. We're seeing, you know, I've talked about how the healthcare system is very inefficient

and broken. And all we're seeing right now is I think we spend $81 billion on healthcare right now. And all we're seeing is the parties saying, well, the conservatives are saying, well, we'll spend $2 billion more, but we're going to keep the broken and inefficient system. And the liberals are saying, well, no, we're going to spend $3 billion. And so we'll spend $84 billion instead of $81 billion, but it'll still be in a broken and in an efficient manner and so on. So we're not, we're not seeing plans. I'm not seeing plans anyway. And that's, that's disappointing.

I see what you see. I see the NDP making promises about getting a certain amount of family doctors and they cost it out. And it sounds terribly expensive without changing the system. I see the liberals as is their ideology being a little more moderate than the NDP, a little more maybe efficient with money, but still not explaining where all the doctors come from. And as we've talked about, every time the conservatives even flirt with the idea, well let's give people choice, let's give people access to clinics and maybe an MRI faster, the other parties yell at them and say you're privatizing healthcare. So we go around in this circle on a pretty regular basis.

Yeah. And, and, you know, I think it's very ironic that the same people that say you're not spending enough on healthcare and, and, and scream, listen, you're leading us down the road to two tier American style system, never acknowledged that the Americans actually spend much more on healthcare per capita than we do, and their system is way worse. Let's be clear about this. The American system is totally broken. So it's ironic that those same people would then turn around and when you try and spend

money wisely would turn around and use that and then just say, let's spend more money. Instead, when the country that spends the most money does a really bad job of it, right? So it's not a great argument. Well, and maybe the... Fundamental transformation. Totally. Didn't mean to interrupt there. Maybe it's the urgency of the times too. And yet I would love a more protracted conversation and go,

who's doing things well in European countries? Who's doing things well even in the Far East? Japan seems to be. We're so bad when we get ranked in the OECD rankings about service time and wait time and and yes the cost per person in Canada that we don't it is a cut you did the right thing there by pointing out yeah the US system is worse and and that's the often the complaint about the Liberals and the NDP but I this was a wonderful

opportunity in our election to go is any other country doing something we should consider and we just never get there, do we? No, we don't. And you know, what we should be doing is we should be looking at a complete hiring freeze on all healthcare bureaucrats because we have far too many per capita. We have 10 times as many per capita as Germany does, right? And just saying, you know, we're not going to, we're not hiring. We're not even going to replace the ones who retire and or leave for other reasons.

Let's put a freeze on it. We're not looking at putting in a unified app for healthcare so that, you know, every patient could look on their phone and access their healthcare records, which would have the side effect of standardizing how we share information. And this is a huge problem. It causes tremendous inefficient in our system. I could go on for hours. I'm not going to waste your time,

but that would be a great transformative solution. And we're not talking about how the Ontario Health Teams, which actually have potential there, there actually is some potential there, but you have to have, when you look across the world in that kind of model, family physician leadership at a governance level. So you need the family doctors on the boards of these things

to make sure they don't go sideways if you want them to go in the right direction. And this kind of stuff isn't talked about. Yeah, like before you go, Germany has, nearly all Germans have access to family doctor. 96% say, and they tell you they didn't, they've got a regular place for medical care, and that includes a regular doctor general practitioner.

And again, we don't even open up the envelope and say, oh my goodness, 96% sounds amazing. What are they doing right? The other thing I'd bring up is when Bonnie Cromby or Mart Stiles lay out, well, we're going to bring, where will, let me ask you, where will these family doctors come from? Are they here right now? Do we need to import them from other countries do we need to cut the red tape province to province what do you see yeah

so we have about 6,000 family doctors in Ontario right now who don't have a comprehensive care family practice right because of the challenges of comprehensive care because of the payment because of the challenges of comprehensive care, because of the payment, because of the workload. If you were to make the job a little bit easier, if you were to standardize the information technology with the patient app, if you were to sort of allow them some extra pay, and if you got just one third, just one third of those docs, you could get two thousand of them who are already here, to turn on and open a practice. Each doctor takes about 1200 patients, that's two and a half million, you fixed the problem. Okay, that's the past president of the Ontario Medical Association, Dr. Sahil Gandhi. He

was on with us a little bit earlier. So look, I think most of us would agree, health care is a massive issue. I actually think it's my number one. That's easy to say, I care about education, we're getting nothing. We're getting nothing on reframing education in our province. Housing, we're way behind the Ford government's own promises, but all in terms of what they build the last two years, some of that's cost, inflation has gone down, but I get it. Some of you clearly do not trust the other parties to tackle the housing crisis either. And housing's a three-way finger pointing game, isn't it? The province, the municipalities, the mayors and the city councils who might be NIMBYs

and then the federal government who absolutely crapped out on getting this done. But Ben Mulrooney did a call-in segment a little while ago asking listeners when this election got called to call in with their number one issue in the election, and half of you said it was health care. So why is this not resonating? Why is this election not about the current state of affairs in our health care system?

Why would that potentially be? You just heard me say to Dr. Gandhi, 92% of people in Germany have a family doctor. You want another? France? You want to do that? 83% of French people visited a doctor at least once a year in France, the French people in France. 46% went three or more times a year. What percentage of people in Ontario do you think visit a family doctor or can three or more times a year? Honestly, because we're talking and we can say whatever we want to each other outside of complete and utter hypochondriacs who visit 13 times a year.

So like honestly, other countries have figured this out and sometimes you got to pay with your credit card for a copay for an emergency room visit. Sometimes you do have to pay for something that ends up being important to expedite and speed up the pro- If that's privatization, then sign me up. Because this doesn't work. And everybody knows it doesn't work is another huge factor. 416-870-6400

I'm fired up and ticked off. Because no matter how you're going to vote, you know Nobody's fixing health care. Nobody's making things any better. And is it even stable? No, is it getting worse? Yes Okay, so we can't even say that about education and housing I don't know that the housing crisis will be worse than it was a year ago rents are down I don't know that education and the basics won't get better coming off of the horrifically costly COVID restrictions for our kids for as long as they were out of school and trying to learn online as if. But I know one thing, healthcare will be worse

five years from now in this province. I promise you and it's a promise I don't want to make. 416-870-6400 your call is next. You're listening to the Ben Mulroney show. By the way, Nanos had a poll about the most important issues because we were just talking about healthcare to you the Ontario voters. Want to know what the top one was? Was it dealing with President Trump? No, try again. 14% said that, 28% said healthcare, 22% said the economy. That's the kitchen table stuff. Those are the things we talk about.

The horror stories about the healthcare system. Did you hear about Sam's sister's husband? Those are the stories and you're like, no, what? And we hear about those stories. It's 28 for healthcare. It's seven, by the way, for housing, five for taxes, four for education, three for the environment. That's properly put in its place now. It's not nothing, but it sure isn't one of the top seven issues,

according to Ontarians. So I asked you about the problems and whether we're real, all really disappointed about what we're hearing as in nothing on the healthcare front from the candidates and we got really in terms of tangible fixing of this with 14 days to go. Adrian thanks very much for the phone call you're on the Ben Mulroney show you go right ahead. Hey good morning Ben. It's Greg but that's okay. Oh sorry Greg. No worries at all. I don't know where the interviewer had his information from the interview that you played.

Yeah. So my family is completely in healthcare and we've had many issues that we've traveled to the US and paid for, sort of pay as you go to the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic. And having a brother that's a physician and cousins and family. First off, nobody wants to work in health care here in Canada. It's a terrible environment. People don't receive the respect they deserve in health care. They don't have proper boards. They don't have proper support. So there's a problem on that end that everybody's-

Recruitment and hiring and retaining is a big problem. You got it. In fact, most of the doctors that we knew we met in the Cleveland Clinic and we're talking, you know, just three, four years ago. My father was very ill. I won't make a long story out of that. It was a long journey. And the advice and treatment that we received at the major hospitals here, the UHN and the rest of them, would have been the last ditch effort that they recommended down in the

US. So my father's cancer was incurable. We knew that. They weren't off by telling us that, but we got an extra three years out of them. Time was a family. And that's something that you know, and it wasn't that expensive by the way. So... Cleveland Clinic is a pretty expensive process though. Sign a family up. Well toss me a dollar figure and I'll decide if it's expensive to you or not expensive to you, it might be to our it. Well toss me a dollar figure and I'll decide if it's expensive to you or not expensive to you might be to our listeners. Let me get to my point actually. I don't have time for much more of the point. You mentioned the

Cleveland Clinic. Save my taxes and let me spend them the way I want. And you want that choice. I get it. I get it. I get it Adrian and this is the thing you do get faster access to specialists. We lose hundreds of millions of dollars a decade by people going down to America for an MRI for surgery. I've told you the story on my show anyway, a million times. My kid basically blew out his patella playing competitive soccer September 22. Got an MRI in November, got the surgery in February. Not bad, not bad, but it took seven months from injury to surgery. If you'd have told me that was 12 or 14, we're in the cart of Buffalo and we're out the

six, seven, eight thousand dollars. I've lived that system. It's great if you're not really, really sick and if somebody is really, really sick, right, leukemia, something far worse, it breaks people in half economically. But you want to talk about greater choice providers? They got it. Absolutely. When I made 28 grand there, I had better health care than I do now. And I'm lucky I don't make 28 grand anymore at age 51. So yeah, like you got choices there, faster access to specialists, but too many people fall through the cracks. So that's why, and it's very expensive. There's still tax dollars that go into healthcare there.

Bill, last word on this. Thanks for the phone call. Go ahead. Hey, Greg, they're not cracks. They're craters that they're falling through. Of course they are. There's no safety net. It doesn't catch people.

You got it. Yeah, I've been retired from healthcare almost 40 years in healthcare. And so back when I first started, we had medical capacity to take patients in the hospital, but because of budget restraints, you had to reduce all the hospitals, had to reduce their operating structures. And the only way you can do that is reduce the amount of beds that you're going to service. And therefore you're reducing your operation costs by reducing

your staff. So let me drop, let me stop you. Let me ask you a question, Bill, though, because they haven't, they aren't reducing staff. They're reducing your staff and doctors and nurses and orderlies. You know what, where they aren't? HR. You know where they aren't? Equity, diversity, and inclusion. Like the numbers are stark. You can look up any hospital. I'm looking at Health Sciences North in Sudbury right now. They have 1,024 people making over 100 grand. They had 292 five years ago. They're spending way more money. Let's go full stop for just a second. Full stop is medicine and health care delivery is expensive. Full stop. And if you want to go back to 40, 50 years ago of delivering medical care,

we can go back to that model. But as it advances, it becomes more expensive. You said there were cutbacks. There aren't cut are cutbacks are spending way more money at these places they're spending in the wrong places is my point i'd agree totally with you but as the person with boots on the ground if you don't feel a staff position because they've retired or they moved on and you hold those spots open on paper it looks like you've got so many spots but they're not all filled and that means there's less staff on the floors working the hospitals. I hear that.

I have the hospital capacity to take, uh, specialized patients and acute care. Where are the family doctors to send their patients? So then the family doctors become frustrated. No, I hear that. And that's, and that's where the retention comes in, but there have been jobs created is my point. I mean, the data is obvious that that's the case. Daniel Blanchard is no ordinary thief.

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